In recent years, industries of all types have been confronted with problems concerning both elimination of impurities in waste water returned to the environment and reduction of the total volume of water required for plant operation. Progressively more stringent antipollution regulations have led to the development of more sophisticated systems for treating and cleaning effluents. An example of such as sophisticated system is disclosed in copending, commonly assigned application Ser. No. 191,191 filed Sept. 26, 1980, and entitled Treatment of Waste Water, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference in the present application.
In some instances, due to financial constraints, the relatively high concentration of impurities in the effluents to be treated and the sheer volume of the effluents, the waste water treatment system may have to operate at close to its design limitations much of the time. The result of this type of operation can be that relatively small amounts of effluents having very high concentrations of impurities may cause the system to become overloaded. The result may then be that neither the water returned to the plant nor that discharged to the environment can be maintained within the specifications required for plant operation and those mandated by anti-pollution regulations. In a typical industrial plant, such highly concentrated effluents may result from leakage of various plant components, notably pump seals, spillage of highly concentrated reagents and other process liquids due to operator errors, and the like. In such situations, it becomes necessary to devise a technique or process for segregating the highly concentrated effluents from other effluents, so that the waste water treatment system can function properly.